Documents

This group discussion format can be used in a week that covers several big concepts, each of which can be discussed along a similar ("parallel") sequence of discussion questions. The concepts in this particular class are: Wisdom of crowds, Heuristic decision-making, Groupthink, and Cooperation. Read more about Parallel Discussions about Decision-making

Jigsaw activities have students work in groups to think about different articles. The groups then come together and share their work to produce one detailed, comprehensive document on all the articles for the week. Read more about Transitions Jigsaw

In Swedish Aa, Ursula Lindqvist and Suzanne Martin had students watch a recorded video of the poem "Accounting of Summer" to practice singular and plural nouns, learn new words, experience Swedish poetry, and hear the melodic sound of Swedish. Read more about Recorded Swedish Poem

In this activity, David Weimer used different articles on "segregation academies" following Brown v. Board of Education in order to teach students how to evaluate information from a source and consider the origin of the information. Read more about Segregation Academies Jigsaw

In CB51: Making the Middle Ages, the teaching staff, consisting of Professor Dan Smail and TFs Rowan Dorin, Zoe Silverman, Joey McMullen, and Rena Lauer, had students read a common text on a medieval saint, extract all the place names mentioned, and map them in order to learn about the nature of communication in the Middle Ages, geographic analysis, and how to use WorldMap, a way to create and publish maps of geospatial information. Read more about Mapping the Holy

Created by Moriah Beck, Masih Shokrani, Karen Koster, William Soto, David McDonald, and David Swanson for the National Academies Northstar Institute for Undergraduate Teaching in Biology, this activity spans 2-3 classes and uses lecture, clicker questions, jigsaws, and group discussions to teach the relationship between protein structure and function. Read more about Protein Function Follows Form: Two-Lesson Activity

Created by Jillian Banks, Jeremy Brown, Cindy Gordon, Chris Gregg, Travis Marsico, Chris Osovitz, and Rebecca Symula, this activity focuses on the importance of temporal scale and specifically seeks to resolve the common student misconception that evolutionary change is only observable on a single timescale. It utilizes index cards in an interactive jigsaw. Read more about The Problem of Scale in Evolution

Created by Kostia Bergman, Erin Cram, Wendy Smith, Scott Dobrin, Presque Isle, and Judith Roe, this lesson for an intermediate Cell Biology course encourages students to take a big-picture view of the cell by comparing cells to buildings in order to think about the dynamic processes within cells. The lesson utilizes a jigsaw and quick write. Read more about Cells vs. Buildings

This activity teaches skills in critical assessment of the peer-reviewed published literature. It focuses on analysis of clinical trials in mental health, but the principles and methods are readily generalizable to other scientific literature. The “Smackdown” approach represents an augmentation of the traditional “journal club” mode of teaching critical scientific reading skills.